Most people agree that reading a document in landscape mode is difficult. The linux command "xrandr" allows you to rotate the displayed image on the screen, although you do need to set a virtual window. E.g. on an EEE set a virtual display to 600x1024, viewport 1024x600, and then rotate the image to the left or right, and it should fill the entire screen. I assume something similar can be done with Windows. This handles the landscape/portrait issue.
With Adobe, and xpdf in linux and Foxit in Windows, PDF support is much better, including zoom to fit page, or zoom in on small sections. You can get a screen size that suits you, from 9" to 11.6" netbooks for under $500. Plus you have a fully functional netbook. Battery life and reding in direct sunlight are the only problems I see.
The root cause of the problem is that FF uses SQLite. Real databases (even "Lite" versions), are paranoid about file integrity, and therefore do file commits via fsync(), or whatever, almost every time they do file writes. The FF developers brought this on themselves when they included SQLite as an integral part of Firefox. This is a browser, not a database, folks. Why the bleep does it need an SQL database? And how long before the Russian Business Network starts running SQL injection attacks against Firefox?
I remember several years ago, when the browser was called Mozilla 0.95. Besides a browser, it had email and usenet news and web development tools and it was big/bloated/slow, and people were making "about:kitchen sink" jokes. Firefox was forked out of Mozilla and presented as the lightweight lean-and-mean *WEB BROWSER* that people really wanted. I think it's time for another such fork. Firefox is an OK operating system, but it lacks a lightweight web browser.
I'm not a programmer, but if I had a team of programmers reporting to me, and a budget to pay them with, I'd start a Firefox fork. First to go would be SQLite, and I'd revert "abortion bar" to the previous Firefox behaviour.
>> I'll stick to my router and its Port Address Translation even >> if they switch over to IPv6.
> PLEASE no you won't... That's like saying you are going to keep > your 386sx system because your scared of the new 486 processors > and don't want the extra processing power.
What, exactly, will the benefit of not NATing be to 95% of users? I'm not talking about the bandwidth hogs running bit-torrent or the geeks here running exotic setups. I'm talking about the vast majority that don't run servers.
Yes, NAT doesn't allow servers, except via port-forwarding. And yes it may kill some brain-dead apps. But for most of us it doesn't matter.
> What bleeding edge? IPv6 has been out for 10 years! that isn't > bleeding edge man. Maybe you're just worried about having to > learn some new-er stuff? Maybe have to ask some questions that > make you look foolish? eh?
I run Gentoo linux, as much for the control-freak aspect as for the optimization aspect. One day a few years ago the maintainers, in their "infinite wisdom", decided to make IPV6 a default USE flag. That meant that every app that was capable of IPV6 support got it built. Of course, I noticed it when mplayer, Firefox, etc started taking an extra 45 seconds to start doing their thing, because they sent out IPV6 DNS requests first, and waited for them to time out, before sending out IPV4 DNS requests. Let's just say I was not impressed. From that point onwards, I put in "-*" at the beginning of the USE flag, and followed it with only the items I wanted/needed.
One day, when it makes sense to do so, I will convert to IPV6. That day will be when my ISP starts supporting it. I'll put up a test machine and make sure that my IPV6 iptables firewall is just as anal as my IPV4 iptables firewall. Following that, I'll put a NATing IPV6 router in front of the machine, and migrate over.
Unlike me, most end-users will probably hook up their IPV4 machines with IPV4 software to a converter box. I'm showing my age, but...
- when UHF first came in (channels 14-to-83 back then), people got converter boxes so they wouldn't have to throw their old TV sets away
- when cable "mid-band" and "super-band" channels first came in, people got converter boxes to they wouldn't have to throw their old TV sets away
- when ATSC first came in, people got converter boxes to they wouldn't have to throw their old TV sets away
Notice a pattern? I expect that when IPV6 first comes in, people will get converter boxes to they wouldn't have to throw their old software away.
> That would be quite pointless, given the number of > IPs available. Why shouldn't the ISP just hand out > a/64? There are plenty of them to go around.
I'm sure TPTB (The Powers That Be) were thinking exactly the same thing 35 years ago as they handed out class A and B blocks of IPV4 addresses to companies and universities.
It's possible for Comcast to run their entire US operation with on/48. Shit happens. We might save ourselves a lot of headaches several years down the road if we treat IPV6 addresses as scarce commodities from day 1.
> Dealer network is still going to be American. So, you'll probably > be stuck buying your hummers from fat truck guys, as per usual.
Despite being owned by a Chinese company. production will remain in the US for a couple of years, being built by UAW types who recently took a pay cut. Yes folks, it's the ultimate combo of Oriental know-how, and cheap American labor.
So "all other browsers" can demand to be on the list. What's to prevent "American Adware" and "Built By Boris" (from Russian Business Network) from showing up on the list?
> Lets stop demonising all of the newspapers here. We are talking about our > ability of our society to have full time, paid reporters who act as independant > watchdogs which play a critical role in our society as a check and balance > against corruption. Making sure the newspapers can survive is in the best > interests of consumers who rely upon and benefit from the research, > investigation and reporting of news investigators and journalists.
I hereby charge you with attempted murder. I almost died laughing after reading that. You're talking about the same left-wing rags that...
* pounded Sarah Palin about someone else's (her daughter's) indiscretions, but kept mum about John Edwards' love child while he was still a potential candidate.
* hounded Palin about her wardrobe (paid out of her own pockets), while avoiding real issues
* whined about how CitiBank's sub-prime lending helped cause a financial crisis crisis while not mentioning that CitiBank *WAS FORCED TO LEND TO SUBPRIME BORROWERS* due to a lawsuit where a certain up-and-coming Chicago lawyer by the name of Obama was co-counsel on the plaintiff's side http://clearinghouse.wustl.edu/detail.php?id=10112
Die, left-wing rags, die. I will dance on your grave.
> One approach appears to be relatively obvious: Use journalistic content to > persuade people to come to your Craigslist-style site, rather than the > Craigslist-style site that has no journalism.
Big fail. When you go to Craigslist, you go because you want to buy or sell something... period... end of story. This is not a monopoly situation like cable TV where, when you want channel A, you're forced to buy it as part of a bundle that includes channels B, C, D, E, F, and G, and pay a higher price in the process.
In the "good old days" newspapers were a monopoly for clssified ads, and they could force this through. The monopoly is gone, and people don't want to pay extra for "the bundle".
QBASIC for some quick-n-dirty programming when linux shell scripts or spreadsheets aren't enough, but C or PERL is overkill.
dBASE IV, complete with DOS 4GW extended memory manager runs just fine. Woohoo.
I also have the original floppies for Chessmaster 3000 (yeah it's ancient). I could not get it to run under WINE. But CM 3000 is so ancient that it supports Windows 3.1 and Win95. When they were throwing out old computers at work, they threw out the Windows 3.1 floppies with them. I took a set home with me. I couldn't install from the floppy drives, but I was able to image the floppies as disk files, and tell DOSbox to treat the image files as floppies.
Win 3.1 was a graphical shell that installed on top of DOS. DOSbox's emulation is good enough that Win3.1 installed properly on top of DOSbox. Now I can pull up the DOSbox prompt, "CD \WINDOWS" and type "WIN", and up comes ye olde Program Manager.
I also run the original Tetris under DOSbox. I use a cheat. Tell Tetris that you're using a joystick, even if you don't have one. That slows down the game to make it more playable.
Buying StarOffice *ONCE* cost more than buying 42,000 Office97 licences in 1999. But guess what, Office 97 (AKA Office 8) was superceded by Office 2000 (AKA Office 9), *AND OFFICE97 WAS NO LONGER AVAILABLE*. So all your new computers and new employees will now end up with Office 2000 (AKA Office 9), until 2002, at which point Office XP (AKA Office 10) was introduced. That was followed by Office 2003 (AKA Office 11) and Office 2007 (AKA Office 12).
Supporting multiple versions of a product amongst 42,000+ users is painful, so Sun's only choice would be to upgrade all its users, half-a-dozen times. And suddenly MS gets more money from the ongoing upgrades.
But wait... it gets worse... As we all know, new versions of Office are different enough to require re-training, and also re-writing perfectly functional macros and VBA apps that break each time you upgrade. Count up the lost productivity from half-a-dozen transitions, and $1,700 per user looks minor.
But wait... it gets worse... Newer versions of Office won't run on older versions of Windows, requiring you to upgrade your OS. And since each version of Windows has been more bloated than the previous version, that effectively means buy a new computer to run a new version of MS Office, which only runs on MS Windows.
Because Sun bought the StarOffice code, they were able to compile it themselves, on Windows *AND* unix. Suddenly... 1) Sun could make StarOffice run on several versions of Windows, which reduced the necessity for upgrades of Windows and computers 2) Many of their Unix box users could simply dump Windows althogether, and use the Unix version of StarOffice for email, etc. This meant that Sun's IT people not only didn't need to buy and constantly upgrade MS Office, they no longer needed to buy and constantly upgrade Windows, and buy and constantly upgrade computers for several thousand of their staff.
You get... a) improved employee productivity with fewer unnecessary "upgrades" to their office suite b) improved employee productivity with fewer unnecessary "upgrades" to the OS c) save a bunch of money not having to pay for unnecessary "upgrades" to their office suite d) save a bunch of money not having to pay for unnecessary "upgrades" to their OS e) save a bunch of money not having to pay for newer computers every couple of years f) save a bunch of money bbecause not doing all the upgrades and re-training means fewer IT staff required (sorry about that, Slashdot types)
> Do you really honestly think an embedded version of flash would actually > require the same features that make the desktop version insecure?
Errr, uhhhm, there is a significant difference between what features are required in any commercial software, and what it ends up with. Does PDF (also by Adobe) *REALLY* need javascript to display pages of data??? Does it really need a gazillion plugins that take forever to load, whereas Foxit and Xpdf load instantly??? Does Flash *REALLY* need the ability to view through your PC USB camera, and listen through your PC microphone, and put stuff into your your clipboard ( http://news.cnet.com/8301-1009_3-10021715-83.html )???
To quote a very wise person... "Answer - no of course not". ***BUT THAT GARBAGE STILL GETS PUT IN, JUST THE SAME***. What makes you think that Flash-for-TV will break the pattern, and not have a whole bunch of extraneous garbage/bloat/features?
> In a move that should make cable companies nervous, Adobe announces > they are going to push a Flash that runs directly on TVs.
Considering the security patches Adobe has had to release for Flash, as a TV owner, I too would be nervous about Flash on TV. So instead of paying a cableco umpteen dollars for programs, I'd have to pay Norton or Macafee umpteen dollars for a continuously-updated anti-virus to protect my TV against the Russian Business Network. No, thank you. If I can find a Flash video worth playing on my 50" TV, I'll damn well hook op my PC to the TV.
The pox on both your houses KDE/GNOME. I run Blackbox, because it doesn't get in the way. I got used to it on my old Dell 450 mhz PIII with 128 megs of RAM. KDE/GNOME were simply out of the question. I could see the desktop icons being slowly painfully drawn at startup.
My current computer has more video RAM than the old one had main RAM. But that's not an excuse to waste resources. Blackbox flies on a modern machine, especially with *PROPERLY OPTIMIZED* Gentoo (I said optimizied, not riced up). I run mostly Firefox/Gnumeric/AbiWord/Mplayer/GIMP on the GUI, and I generally flip back to a real textmode console to run mutt (email) and slrn/slrnpull (usenet news).
At work I'm stuck with Windows. After a while I get used to it, but it seems that with every new version (95/98/2000/XP) it all changes, and "everything you know is wrong". What's wrong with sticking with something that works?
> Me, I would have preferred to extend the dotted-quad notation over using > the colon-separated hex format usually used for IPv6. Dotted quads look > more familiar for network administrators, software developers, and so on.
Major problem with that... people with dual-stack TCP/IP implementations will be using both IPV4 and IPV6 *SIMULTANEOUSLY*. *THEREFORE THE TWO SYNTAXES MUST BE UNAMBIGUOUSLY DIFFERENT SO THAT AN IPV6 ADDRESS CANNOT BE CONFUSED WITH AN IPV4 ADDRESS*. Not even by dumb software written by dumb programmers. Example 1.2.3.4 versus 1.2.3.4.5.6. An IPV4-only app that gets IPV6 address 1.2.3.4.5.6 might go to IPV4 address instead. Not good if 1.2.3.4 is a typosquatter or pornsite.
> I see a potential (and easy) solution: Have Firefox deny addition of any > add-ons without the end-user explicitly agreeing that they are OK with > the addition of the add-on.
Impossible. Firefox is *AN APPLICATION*. It runs part of the time, and only with user privileges. Most program installers/updaters require/demand that you A) close all other applications B) give them administrator privileges to perform the install
How is a a user-level application *THAT ISN'T EVEN RUNNING* when the Java install/update takes place, going to stop an administrator-level program??? As for "explicitly agreeing", I'm sure that *AN ADMINISTRATOR-LEVEL APP* can start Firefox, and click on the "I Agree" dialogue button.
The only way to be reasonably certain of no changes in your extensions is to 1) Get a list of all of files, and MD5 checksums thereof, in the extensions folder of each account for Firefox. 2) Un-protect a floppy disk 3) Save the filelist and checksums to a floppy 4) Set the write-protect tab on the floppy 5) Each time you willingly install an extension, GOTO 1 6) Start a background job, *WITH ADMINISTRATOR PRIVILEGES* to check all
extension directories in all accounts against the data on the write-protected
floppy, once every 5 minutes 7) If it finds any changes, have the background app jump out and warn you
Even that won't protect against a Sony rootkit that hides files from ordinary users.
> "The only way to block your number after this is released is > to use Spoofcard," he says with a laugh.
False, bordering on an outright lie. Any 3rd-party forwarder will work. The destination will see the forwarder's number, not yours. Heck, Skype or a cheap dedicated cellphone homed in another area-code will work just as well.
>>> Because ANI is unrelated to caller ID, the caller's telephone number and line type are captured by ANI equipment even if caller ID blocking is activated. The destination telephone company switching office can relay the originating telephone number to ANI delivery services subscribers. Toll-free Inward WATS number subscribers and large companies normally have access to ANI information, either instantly via installed equipment, or from a monthly billing statement. Residential subscribers can obtain access to ANI information through third party companies that charge for the service. >>>
To summarize...
* There are 2 *TOTALLY UNRELATED* means of getting *THE NUMBER THAT IS CALLING YOU*
* Caller ID (technically CNID) sends the callers number during the ringing signal.
Any outfit with their own PBX can send out whatever crap they want as CNID.
That's how spoofing services work, and how telemarketers can fake CNID
* ANI (Automatic Number Identification) is billing information data. Spoofing that
effectively constitutes fraud. And you can be certain that phone companies will
do whatever is necessary to make sure their billing systems work . ANI is very
difficult to spoof.
Having said that, TrapCall can be beaten. Not spoofed, but beaten. ANI passes the number making the call. If you call via Skype, your call is forwarded to Skype, who then forwards the call to the destination. The destination gets Skype's billing data. This is technically correct, but useless for identifying the originator. Oh yeah, Skype pays connection charges at the receiving end, so don't expect them to freely work for 1-900 numbers. This is roughly equivalant to calling from New York to Los Angeles to ask your brother to pass on a message to someone in Atlanta. The person in Atlanta knows they got called by somebody from Los Angeles. This is technically correct, but doesn't let them know that the message originated from New York.
> So where are the folks calling out FF for allowing this to happen?
Huh??? It is impossible for an ordinary application to prevent a system app with root privileges (such as WIndows Update) from doing anything. FF would have to hack Windows Update to block it, which would raise an uproar.
> The amount of venom/vitriol/nerdrage comments in this story is fucking astounding.
Why, because MS is so benevolent and competent and writes such secure code? No. The reason is because of their high-handed tactics, combined with their propensity for malicious behaviour. And please, forget the old saw about not assumimg malice when effing incompetence explains things; the results are the same.
The reaction would've been totally different if MS had promoted this plugin, and made its installation voluntary, and made uninstallation possible without registry hacking. Note that dozens of obscure extensions show up on https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/ This is the "official channel" for people who want to enhance their Firefox. The extensions at this site are downloaded voluntarily by end-users who feel a need for them. And these extensions can be uninstalled by the same users who install them. MS merely needed to have asked the Mozilla folks to link to a specific MS webpage from their addons section, and things would've been copacetic.
Instead, MS chose to act like Apple. Remember the flak Apple caught for trying to sneak in Itunes and Safari for people who install/update Quicktime? We happen to be "equal-opportunity-bashers" here. MS acts like Apple, they catch flak like Apple.
Yes, I did RTFA. FFClickOnce makes automated installation of.NET code (the successor to Visual Basic) much easier. Have you ever heard the phrase "drive-by download"??? Many people fled from IE to FF specifically to avoid this very problem. Now MS throws in code that may enable this in FF. No thanks. BTW, there was a plugin for FF that provided ActiveX support for FF (For crying out loud... WHY?). Let's just say I wouldn't want it on my work machine either.
Firefox is a standards-compliant program that does things via standard API's. MS is going behind Firefox's back and putting stuff in places where Firefox can't write/delete files. You do *NOT* want FF to be able to write/delete all over your system. That is one reason it's safer than IE.
Slashdot Mirror
Most people agree that reading a document in landscape mode is difficult. The linux command "xrandr" allows you to rotate the displayed image on the screen, although you do need to set a virtual window. E.g. on an EEE set a virtual display to 600x1024, viewport 1024x600, and then rotate the image to the left or right, and it should fill the entire screen. I assume something similar can be done with Windows. This handles the landscape/portrait issue.
With Adobe, and xpdf in linux and Foxit in Windows, PDF support is much better, including zoom to fit page, or zoom in on small sections. You can get a screen size that suits you, from 9" to 11.6" netbooks for under $500. Plus you have a fully functional netbook. Battery life and reding in direct sunlight are the only problems I see.
The root cause of the problem is that FF uses SQLite. Real databases (even "Lite" versions), are paranoid about file integrity, and therefore do file commits via fsync(), or whatever, almost every time they do file writes. The FF developers brought this on themselves when they included SQLite as an integral part of Firefox. This is a browser, not a database, folks. Why the bleep does it need an SQL database? And how long before the Russian Business Network starts running SQL injection attacks against Firefox?
I remember several years ago, when the browser was called Mozilla 0.95. Besides a browser, it had email and usenet news and web development tools and it was big/bloated/slow, and people were making "about:kitchen sink" jokes. Firefox was forked out of Mozilla and presented as the lightweight lean-and-mean *WEB BROWSER* that people really wanted. I think it's time for another such fork. Firefox is an OK operating system, but it lacks a lightweight web browser.
I'm not a programmer, but if I had a team of programmers reporting to me, and a budget to pay them with, I'd start a Firefox fork. First to go would be SQLite, and I'd revert "abortion bar" to the previous Firefox behaviour.
>> I'll stick to my router and its Port Address Translation even
>> if they switch over to IPv6.
> PLEASE no you won't... That's like saying you are going to keep
> your 386sx system because your scared of the new 486 processors
> and don't want the extra processing power.
What, exactly, will the benefit of not NATing be to 95% of users? I'm not talking about the bandwidth hogs running bit-torrent or the geeks here running exotic setups. I'm talking about the vast majority that don't run servers.
Yes, NAT doesn't allow servers, except via port-forwarding. And yes it may kill some brain-dead apps. But for most of us it doesn't matter.
> What bleeding edge? IPv6 has been out for 10 years! that isn't
> bleeding edge man. Maybe you're just worried about having to
> learn some new-er stuff? Maybe have to ask some questions that
> make you look foolish? eh?
I run Gentoo linux, as much for the control-freak aspect as for the optimization aspect. One day a few years ago the maintainers, in their "infinite wisdom", decided to make IPV6 a default USE flag. That meant that every app that was capable of IPV6 support got it built. Of course, I noticed it when mplayer, Firefox, etc started taking an extra 45 seconds to start doing their thing, because they sent out IPV6 DNS requests first, and waited for them to time out, before sending out IPV4 DNS requests. Let's just say I was not impressed. From that point onwards, I put in "-*" at the beginning of the USE flag, and followed it with only the items I wanted/needed.
One day, when it makes sense to do so, I will convert to IPV6. That day will be when my ISP starts supporting it. I'll put up a test machine and make sure that my IPV6 iptables firewall is just as anal as my IPV4 iptables firewall. Following that, I'll put a NATing IPV6 router in front of the machine, and migrate over.
Unlike me, most end-users will probably hook up their IPV4 machines with IPV4 software to a converter box. I'm showing my age, but...
- when UHF first came in (channels 14-to-83 back then), people got converter boxes so they wouldn't have to throw their old TV sets away
- when cable "mid-band" and "super-band" channels first came in, people got converter boxes to they wouldn't have to throw their old TV sets away
- when ATSC first came in, people got converter boxes to they wouldn't have to throw their old TV sets away
Notice a pattern? I expect that when IPV6 first comes in, people will get converter boxes to they wouldn't have to throw their old software away.
> That would be quite pointless, given the number of /64? There are plenty of them to go around.
> IPs available. Why shouldn't the ISP just hand out
> a
I'm sure TPTB (The Powers That Be) were thinking exactly the same thing 35 years ago as they handed out class A and B blocks of IPV4 addresses to companies and universities.
It's possible for Comcast to run their entire US operation with on /48. Shit happens. We might save ourselves a lot of headaches several years down the road if we treat IPV6 addresses as scarce commodities from day 1.
> Dealer network is still going to be American. So, you'll probably
> be stuck buying your hummers from fat truck guys, as per usual.
Despite being owned by a Chinese company. production will remain in the US for a couple of years, being built by UAW types who recently took a pay cut. Yes folks, it's the ultimate combo of Oriental know-how, and cheap American labor.
> Of course the only software missing in that list
> is Linux and it's central role in the birth and
> continuing growth of open source software.
I'm a linux fanboi too, but the list is *APPLICATIONS* not operating systems.
So "all other browsers" can demand to be on the list. What's to prevent "American Adware" and "Built By Boris" (from Russian Business Network) from showing up on the list?
> Lets stop demonising all of the newspapers here. We are talking about our
> ability of our society to have full time, paid reporters who act as independant
> watchdogs which play a critical role in our society as a check and balance
> against corruption. Making sure the newspapers can survive is in the best
> interests of consumers who rely upon and benefit from the research,
> investigation and reporting of news investigators and journalists.
I hereby charge you with attempted murder. I almost died laughing after reading that. You're talking about the same left-wing rags that...
* pounded Sarah Palin about someone else's (her daughter's) indiscretions, but kept mum about John Edwards' love child while he was still a potential candidate.
* hounded Palin about her wardrobe (paid out of her own pockets), while avoiding real issues
* whined about how CitiBank's sub-prime lending helped cause a financial crisis crisis while not mentioning that CitiBank *WAS FORCED TO LEND TO SUBPRIME BORROWERS* due to a lawsuit where a certain up-and-coming Chicago lawyer by the name of Obama was co-counsel on the plaintiff's side http://clearinghouse.wustl.edu/detail.php?id=10112
Die, left-wing rags, die. I will dance on your grave.
> One approach appears to be relatively obvious: Use journalistic content to
> persuade people to come to your Craigslist-style site, rather than the
> Craigslist-style site that has no journalism.
Big fail. When you go to Craigslist, you go because you want to buy or sell something... period... end of story. This is not a monopoly situation like cable TV where, when you want channel A, you're forced to buy it as part of a bundle that includes channels B, C, D, E, F, and G, and pay a higher price in the process.
In the "good old days" newspapers were a monopoly for clssified ads, and they could force this through. The monopoly is gone, and people don't want to pay extra for "the bundle".
OK, so *ALL AMERICAN NEWSPAPERS* paywall their websites. Now, what do you do about foreign newspapers???
And it's not just newspapers either. What about...
http://www.cnn.com/
http://www.foxnews.com/
http://www.bbc.co.uk/
http://www.cbc.ca/
What about websites of radio and TV networks, and their individual stations, around the world?
QBASIC for some quick-n-dirty programming when linux shell scripts or spreadsheets aren't enough, but C or PERL is overkill.
dBASE IV, complete with DOS 4GW extended memory manager runs just fine. Woohoo.
I also have the original floppies for Chessmaster 3000 (yeah it's ancient). I could not get it to run under WINE. But CM 3000 is so ancient that it supports Windows 3.1 and Win95. When they were throwing out old computers at work, they threw out the Windows 3.1 floppies with them. I took a set home with me. I couldn't install from the floppy drives, but I was able to image the floppies as disk files, and tell DOSbox to treat the image files as floppies.
Win 3.1 was a graphical shell that installed on top of DOS. DOSbox's emulation is good enough that Win3.1 installed properly on top of DOSbox. Now I can pull up the DOSbox prompt, "CD \WINDOWS" and type "WIN", and up comes ye olde Program Manager.
I also run the original Tetris under DOSbox. I use a cheat. Tell Tetris that you're using a joystick, even if you don't have one. That slows down the game to make it more playable.
Reply to parent and grand-parent...
Buying StarOffice *ONCE* cost more than buying 42,000 Office97 licences in 1999. But guess what, Office 97 (AKA Office 8) was superceded by Office 2000 (AKA Office 9), *AND OFFICE97 WAS NO LONGER AVAILABLE*. So all your new computers and new employees will now end up with Office 2000 (AKA Office 9), until 2002, at which point Office XP (AKA Office 10) was introduced. That was followed by Office 2003 (AKA Office 11) and Office 2007 (AKA Office 12).
Supporting multiple versions of a product amongst 42,000+ users is painful, so Sun's only choice would be to upgrade all its users, half-a-dozen times. And suddenly MS gets more money from the ongoing upgrades.
But wait... it gets worse... As we all know, new versions of Office are different enough to require re-training, and also re-writing perfectly functional macros and VBA apps that break each time you upgrade. Count up the lost productivity from half-a-dozen transitions, and $1,700 per user looks minor.
But wait... it gets worse... Newer versions of Office won't run on older versions of Windows, requiring you to upgrade your OS. And since each version of Windows has been more bloated than the previous version, that effectively means buy a new computer to run a new version of MS Office, which only runs on MS Windows.
Because Sun bought the StarOffice code, they were able to compile it themselves, on Windows *AND* unix. Suddenly...
1) Sun could make StarOffice run on several versions of Windows, which reduced the necessity for upgrades of Windows and computers
2) Many of their Unix box users could simply dump Windows althogether, and use the Unix version of StarOffice for email, etc. This meant that Sun's IT people not only didn't need to buy and constantly upgrade MS Office, they no longer needed to buy and constantly upgrade Windows, and buy and constantly upgrade computers for several thousand of their staff.
You get...
a) improved employee productivity with fewer unnecessary "upgrades" to their office suite
b) improved employee productivity with fewer unnecessary "upgrades" to the OS
c) save a bunch of money not having to pay for unnecessary "upgrades" to their office suite
d) save a bunch of money not having to pay for unnecessary "upgrades" to their OS
e) save a bunch of money not having to pay for newer computers every couple of years
f) save a bunch of money bbecause not doing all the upgrades and re-training means fewer IT staff required (sorry about that, Slashdot types)
I think Sun came out way ahead on the deal.
> Do you really honestly think an embedded version of flash would actually
> require the same features that make the desktop version insecure?
Errr, uhhhm, there is a significant difference between what features are required in any commercial software, and what it ends up with. Does PDF (also by Adobe) *REALLY* need javascript to display pages of data??? Does it really need a gazillion plugins that take forever to load, whereas Foxit and Xpdf load instantly??? Does Flash *REALLY* need the ability to view through your PC USB camera, and listen through your PC microphone, and put stuff into your your clipboard ( http://news.cnet.com/8301-1009_3-10021715-83.html )???
To quote a very wise person... "Answer - no of course not". ***BUT THAT GARBAGE STILL GETS PUT IN, JUST THE SAME***. What makes you think that Flash-for-TV will break the pattern, and not have a whole bunch of extraneous garbage/bloat/features?
> In a move that should make cable companies nervous, Adobe announces
> they are going to push a Flash that runs directly on TVs.
Considering the security patches Adobe has had to release for Flash, as a TV owner, I too would be nervous about Flash on TV. So instead of paying a cableco umpteen dollars for programs, I'd have to pay Norton or Macafee umpteen dollars for a continuously-updated anti-virus to protect my TV against the Russian Business Network. No, thank you. If I can find a Flash video worth playing on my 50" TV, I'll damn well hook op my PC to the TV.
The pox on both your houses KDE/GNOME. I run Blackbox, because it doesn't get in the way. I got used to it on my old Dell 450 mhz PIII with 128 megs of RAM. KDE/GNOME were simply out of the question. I could see the desktop icons being slowly painfully drawn at startup.
My current computer has more video RAM than the old one had main RAM. But that's not an excuse to waste resources. Blackbox flies on a modern machine, especially with *PROPERLY OPTIMIZED* Gentoo (I said optimizied, not riced up). I run mostly Firefox/Gnumeric/AbiWord/Mplayer/GIMP on the GUI, and I generally flip back to a real textmode console to run mutt (email) and slrn/slrnpull (usenet news).
At work I'm stuck with Windows. After a while I get used to it, but it seems that with every new version (95/98/2000/XP) it all changes, and "everything you know is wrong". What's wrong with sticking with something that works?
> Me, I would have preferred to extend the dotted-quad notation over using
> the colon-separated hex format usually used for IPv6. Dotted quads look
> more familiar for network administrators, software developers, and so on.
Major problem with that... people with dual-stack TCP/IP implementations will be using both IPV4 and IPV6 *SIMULTANEOUSLY*. *THEREFORE THE TWO SYNTAXES MUST BE UNAMBIGUOUSLY DIFFERENT SO THAT AN IPV6 ADDRESS CANNOT BE CONFUSED WITH AN IPV4 ADDRESS*. Not even by dumb software written by dumb programmers. Example 1.2.3.4 versus 1.2.3.4.5.6. An IPV4-only app that gets IPV6 address 1.2.3.4.5.6 might go to IPV4 address instead. Not good if 1.2.3.4 is a typosquatter or pornsite.
> I see a potential (and easy) solution: Have Firefox deny addition of any
> add-ons without the end-user explicitly agreeing that they are OK with
> the addition of the add-on.
Impossible. Firefox is *AN APPLICATION*. It runs part of the time, and only with user privileges. Most program installers/updaters require/demand that you
A) close all other applications
B) give them administrator privileges to perform the install
How is a a user-level application *THAT ISN'T EVEN RUNNING* when the Java install/update takes place, going to stop an administrator-level program??? As for "explicitly agreeing", I'm sure that *AN ADMINISTRATOR-LEVEL APP* can start Firefox, and click on the "I Agree" dialogue button.
The only way to be reasonably certain of no changes in your extensions is to
1) Get a list of all of files, and MD5 checksums thereof, in the extensions folder of each account for Firefox.
2) Un-protect a floppy disk
3) Save the filelist and checksums to a floppy
4) Set the write-protect tab on the floppy
5) Each time you willingly install an extension, GOTO 1
6) Start a background job, *WITH ADMINISTRATOR PRIVILEGES* to check all
extension directories in all accounts against the data on the write-protected
floppy, once every 5 minutes
7) If it finds any changes, have the background app jump out and warn you
Even that won't protect against a Sony rootkit that hides files from ordinary users.
> "The only way to block your number after this is released is
> to use Spoofcard," he says with a laugh.
False, bordering on an outright lie. Any 3rd-party forwarder will work. The destination will see the forwarder's number, not yours. Heck, Skype or a cheap dedicated cellphone homed in another area-code will work just as well.
I can't believe the ignorance of the referenced article. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Automatic_number_identification for an intelligent explanation of what's happening. The important part is...
>>>
Because ANI is unrelated to caller ID, the caller's telephone number and line type
are captured by ANI equipment even if caller ID blocking is activated. The destination
telephone company switching office can relay the originating telephone number to ANI
delivery services subscribers. Toll-free Inward WATS number subscribers and large
companies normally have access to ANI information, either instantly via installed
equipment, or from a monthly billing statement. Residential subscribers can obtain
access to ANI information through third party companies that charge for the service.
>>>
To summarize...
* There are 2 *TOTALLY UNRELATED* means of getting *THE NUMBER THAT IS CALLING YOU*
* Caller ID (technically CNID) sends the callers number during the ringing signal.
Any outfit with their own PBX can send out whatever crap they want as CNID.
That's how spoofing services work, and how telemarketers can fake CNID
* ANI (Automatic Number Identification) is billing information data. Spoofing that
effectively constitutes fraud. And you can be certain that phone companies will
do whatever is necessary to make sure their billing systems work . ANI is very
difficult to spoof.
Having said that, TrapCall can be beaten. Not spoofed, but beaten. ANI passes the number making the call. If you call via Skype, your call is forwarded to Skype, who then forwards the call to the destination. The destination gets Skype's billing data. This is technically correct, but useless for identifying the originator. Oh yeah, Skype pays connection charges at the receiving end, so don't expect them to freely work for 1-900 numbers. This is roughly equivalant to calling from New York to Los Angeles to ask your brother to pass on a message to someone in Atlanta. The person in Atlanta knows they got called by somebody from Los Angeles. This is technically correct, but doesn't let them know that the message originated from New York.
> my wife hates using my computer because of noscript. i've
> gotten used to it and end up turning it off while she's surfing.
Give her a separate account (Yes, Firefox allows multiple accounts). You can set one up for your wife and another one for your bank, etc.
> So where are the folks calling out FF for allowing this to happen?
Huh??? It is impossible for an ordinary application to prevent a system app with root privileges (such as WIndows Update) from doing anything. FF would have to hack Windows Update to block it, which would raise an uproar.
> The amount of venom/vitriol/nerdrage comments in this story is fucking astounding.
Why, because MS is so benevolent and competent and writes such secure code? No. The reason is because of their high-handed tactics, combined with their propensity for malicious behaviour. And please, forget the old saw about not assumimg malice when effing incompetence explains things; the results are the same.
The reaction would've been totally different if MS had promoted this plugin, and made its installation voluntary, and made uninstallation possible without registry hacking. Note that dozens of obscure extensions show up on https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/ This is the "official channel" for people who want to enhance their Firefox. The extensions at this site are downloaded voluntarily by end-users who feel a need for them. And these extensions can be uninstalled by the same users who install them. MS merely needed to have asked the Mozilla folks to link to a specific MS webpage from their addons section, and things would've been copacetic.
Instead, MS chose to act like Apple. Remember the flak Apple caught for trying to sneak in Itunes and Safari for people who install/update Quicktime? We happen to be "equal-opportunity-bashers" here. MS acts like Apple, they catch flak like Apple.
Yes, I did RTFA. FFClickOnce makes automated installation of .NET code (the successor to Visual Basic) much easier. Have you ever heard the phrase "drive-by download"??? Many people fled from IE to FF specifically to avoid this very problem. Now MS throws in code that may enable this in FF. No thanks. BTW, there was a plugin for FF that provided ActiveX support for FF (For crying out loud... WHY?). Let's just say I wouldn't want it on my work machine either.
Firefox is a standards-compliant program that does things via standard API's. MS is going behind Firefox's back and putting stuff in places where Firefox can't write/delete files. You do *NOT* want FF to be able to write/delete all over your system. That is one reason it's safer than IE.
...is because he's afraid people won't be able to watch his infomercials during the 2012 election campaign.
> The FCC is selling a big chunk of the 700MHz UHF spectrum,
> right? So will some of my channels move?
See http://www.fcc.gov/dtv/markets/ and select your city for a list of channels and coverage maps.
Americans living near the Canadian border might be interested in http://www.ic.gc.ca/eic/site/smt-gst.nsf/vwapj/DTV_PLAN_Dec08-e.pdf/$file/DTV_PLAN_Dec08-e.pdf (PDF document). It lists Canadian Analog/Transitional/Final frequencies. The Canadian analogue shutdown is scheduled for August 31, 2011